We began by stressing how the way in which you present yourself to your students can help you achieve your learning goals. We hoped that participants would leave motivated to think about how they could align their teaching persona with their student learning goals.
In order to illustrate how different presentation styles can be utilized for different learning goals, Sarah D gave an example of a freshman seminar she hopes to teach on "The Amazing World of Ants." The main goal of this seminar would be to awaken students to the fascinating behavior, ecology, and life history of ants and make them excited about these animals, rather than afraid of them. In order to do that, she would be best served by being enthusiastic and exciting when presenting information. Sarah A gave a contrasting example of a class she has taught in Gender Studies on sexual assault. It would behoove her to assume a more serious tone in a class of this sort and place an emphasis on making people feel comfortable enough to discuss such serious issues.
Richard concluded the workshop by going through a S.W.O.T. analysis with the group. The idea of this exercise is to think of your strengths as an individual (and teacher). Then you list your weaknesses. These are meant to be inherent, internal qualities that help you or hold you back. Then you think about the external forces that you feel threatened by and the external forces that you perceive as opportunities. The last part of this exercise it to think about how you can take your perceived weaknesses and make them strengths and, likewise, how you can take the things that threaten you and make them opportunities to improve.
We then had a discussion about what a teaching persona is. We defined it as the way in which someone presents oneself and the how one is perceived by their students. We also stressed that your identity in the classroom can draw from, but doesn't need to be identical to, your actual personality.
In order to illustrate how different presentation styles can be utilized for different learning goals, Sarah D gave an example of a freshman seminar she hopes to teach on "The Amazing World of Ants." The main goal of this seminar would be to awaken students to the fascinating behavior, ecology, and life history of ants and make them excited about these animals, rather than afraid of them. In order to do that, she would be best served by being enthusiastic and exciting when presenting information. Sarah A gave a contrasting example of a class she has taught in Gender Studies on sexual assault. It would behoove her to assume a more serious tone in a class of this sort and place an emphasis on making people feel comfortable enough to discuss such serious issues.
Richard concluded the workshop by going through a S.W.O.T. analysis with the group. The idea of this exercise is to think of your strengths as an individual (and teacher). Then you list your weaknesses. These are meant to be inherent, internal qualities that help you or hold you back. Then you think about the external forces that you feel threatened by and the external forces that you perceive as opportunities. The last part of this exercise it to think about how you can take your perceived weaknesses and make them strengths and, likewise, how you can take the things that threaten you and make them opportunities to improve.
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